ign men-of-war that overshadowed
us. The Orient was on every hand, and I looked wonderingly at the
slightly built, gray-haired man at my side, with a feeling that he
had stepped from out some wild South Sea tale.

"Your Highness," I said, as we chatted, "tell me how you made subjects
out of pirates and head-hunters, when our great nation, with all its
power and gold, has only been able after one hundred years to make
paupers out of our Indians."

"Do you see that man?" he replied, pointing to a stalwart, brown-faced
Dyak, who in the blue and gold uniform of Sarawak was leaning idly
against the bulwarks. "That is the Dato (Lord) Imaum, Judge of the
Supreme Court of Sarawak. He was one of the most redoubtable of
the Suloo pirates. My uncle fought him for eight years. In all that
time he never broke his word in battle or in truce. When Sir James
was driven from his throne by the Chinese, the Dato Imaum fought to
reinstate him as his master.

"Civilization is only skin deep, and so is barbarism. Had your country
never broken its word and been as just as it is powerful, your red
men would have been to-day where our brown men are--our equals."

An hour later I stepped into my launch, which was lying alongside. The
American flag at the peak came down, and the guns of the Ranee belched
forth the consular salute.

I instinctively raised my hat as we glided over the phosphorescent
waters of the harbor, for in my thoughts I was still in the presence
of one of the great ones of the earth.

AMOK!

A Malayan Story

If you run amok in Malaya, you may perhaps kill your enemy or wound
your dearest friend, but you may be certain that in the end you will
be krissed like a pariah dog. Every man, woman, and child will turn
his or her hand against you, from the mother who bore you to the
outcast you have befriended. The laws are as immutable as fate.

Just where the great river Maur empties its vast volume of red water
across a shifting bar into the Straits of Malacca, stands the kampong
of Bander Maharani.

The Sultan Abubaker named the village in honor of his dead Sultana,
and here, close down to the bank, was the palace of his nephew--the
Governor, Prince Sulliman.

A wide, red, well-paved road separated the village of thatch and
grass from the palace grounds, and ended at a wharf, up to which a
steam-launch would dash from time to time, startling the half-grown
crocodiles that slept beneath the rickety timbers.